Happy New Year! I hope the holiday season was good for you and yours. For me, it was okay and nothing to get too excited about. Here in the Pacific Northwest, it’s been nothing but rain, rain, and more rain. I guess that’s why they call it WASHington. As for the stock market, it declined a bit in December but in January it seems to have recovered a bit.

Time to do the numbers and see how December’s dividend income performed:

ARR $ 2.00
BGY $33.80*
CIK $22.50
CLM $72.32*
DHY $27.13
EDF $15.00*
EHI $26.80*
EHI $26.80*
EXG $82.95
NCV $29.75
PFN $32.31
ZTR $24.00*
TOTAL $395.36

* Includes Return of Capital

$395.36 huh? Ugh. That’s pretty bad compared to past similar months such as March, June, September, and December. Unfortunately for December, AWP’s monthly $44.00 payout and USA’s quarterly $45.00 payout were deferred to January. So December’s loss will be January’s gain.

There was a dividend cut in December. USA cut its quarterly dividend from $0.16/share to $0.15/share. Hopefully there won’t be any more USA dividend cuts for some time.

On the bright side, EHI paid out twice in December, so the extra payout was a pleasant surprise and helped to slightly mitigate the missed payouts from AWP and USA. Also PNNT raised its quarterly dividend from $0.15/share to $0.165/share (a 10% increase).

Again, because I needed the cash, I sold off more shares of PNNT. First 100 shares at $6.05/share, another 100 shares were sold at $5.88/share, and 150 shares were sold at $5.60/share.

Overall, December’s dividend income was a low that I haven’t seen since 2014. This is, to say the least, rather depressing and it does not bode well for the new year.

Image Credit: jarmoluk (pixabay.com)